Alex Singleton is part of the Daily Telegraph's leader-writing team and is a contributing editor at the Sunday Telegraph. You can visit his personal site and follow him on Twitter.

Anglican bishops are promoting ignorance

Full coverage of UK politicsThe sight of 600 bishops marching though Westminster last Thursday was, at face value, a welcome move. Rather than obsessing about the ordination of women and homosexuals, the Church was concerning itself with poverty, surely a welcome development.

Bishops fail to see the wider picture of global poverty

What a pity, therefore, that these bishops seemed completely confused about the causes of global poverty. Holding signs demanding that leaders of rich countries keep their (politically-driven) promises to halve global poverty by 2015, they fell into the trap of believing that countries like Chad and Ethopia are poor because of the actions of rich countries.

Instead of quoting Micah 6:8, which calls believers "to do justice, and love kindness", they should have been quoting the parable of the talents, which criticises the servant who is only given one talent but who does nothing with it.

Many of the bishops presumably fall for the fixed quantity of wealth fallacy – the notion that there is a limited amount of prosperity in the world and that if we are rich, this is at the expense of the poor. The savvier among them will realise that wealth can be created, but sadly still believe that the actions of rich countries cause Africa to be poor.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The whole notion of "trade justice", widely promoted by churches, is gibberish. After all, the poorest nations already have preferential trade access to European economies thanks to the Everything But Arms agreement, and the countries now known as Asian Tigers faced much more onerous trade restrictions when they were starting to develop.

Given that 45 of the 49 least developed countries are net food importers, and would remain so for the medium term even if the Common Agricultural Policy were removed, the villainy of agricultural subsidies is felt far more significantly by European consumers and emerging economies, than by the poorest African nations, who actually benefit from cheap food.

It is the economic mismanagement of the poorest countries that is the cause of their poverty. A hostility to the private sector (in Ethiopia, for example, private enterprise is almost non-existent and foreign banks are banned), combined with anti-globalisation policies that discourage the purchase of fertiliser and machinery, is hugely damaging.

It is disappointing that none of the bishops, as far as I am aware, was holding a placard calling for free markets, free trade and better protection of private property. And until the church gets to grips with the real causes of poverty, it will continue to be a promoter not of understanding, but of ignorance.